Sudan survivor spreads his message / Sudanese "lost boy" headlines this weekend's human-rights celebration at BSU

Two stories:

From Boise NBC affiliate KTVB...

(The source page contains embedded video. - EJM)

A survivor of civil wars in Sudan is in Boise this weekend to spread a message.

He, along with the [Idaho] Sudan [Divestment Task Force], are calling for a stop to what they call the murder of innocent people in the African country.

Survivor John Bul Dau, author of God Grew Tired of Us, is in Boise this weekend to spread a message about the importance of fighting for human rights.

In the Darfur region of Sudan, it's estimated [that] more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million are displaced since rebels took up arms against the government in 2003.

At the age of 13, John fled from his village in Sudan and lived in a refugee camp in Kenya for ten years, before arriving in America.

The world of today is not like 5 years ago....said John Bul Dau, [survivor] and author.

“Never again is happening right now in Africa,” said Rose Beal, [holocaust survivor].

Rose Beal is a holocaust survivor who relates to John because, she says, they have both been persecuted.

“All of my extended family was exterminated during the holocaust,” [said] Rose Beal, [holocaust survivor].

Now, she says, there's a new genocide that people need to be aware of.

“I was starving for 3 or 4 days[;] he was starving for months,” [said] Rose Beal, [holocaust survivor].

“I go from school to school and talk to students about my life story[....] In order for them to really succeed, they must persevere, they must stay the course and never give up,” [said] John Bul Dau, [survivor] and author.

John Dau says [that] he is honored to bring his message to Boise and meet the people of Idaho. He says [that] visiting the Anne Frank human-rights memorial here in downtown Boise is unforgettable, because it’s a symbol of something [that] he wants everyone to remember...[that] hope must never be lost.

From Boise's "Idaho Statesman"...

In 1987, a 13-year-old Dinka boy named John Bul Dau awoke to the sound of mortar shells destroying his village. Running blindly, driven by the whistle of bullets in the dark, he followed a man [that] he thought was his father into the unknown.

Twenty years later, Dau is talking about what happened that night, about scrambling naked and starving with a throng of orphans from the lush Nile River basin of southern Sudan, to an unstable relief settlement in Ethiopia, to a decade-long purgatory in a Kenyan refugee camp. He saw his people beaten, raped, and murdered, his Dinka brothers emaciated and broken, as they marched from border to border.

Sudan's Muslim government in the north had sentenced all Christian males in the south to death, and Dau was one of 27,000 boys who ultimately fled to escape the slaughter. Twelve thousand made it to Kenya in 1991; 3,800 were flown to the United States 10 years later, and Dau was among them.

In six years, he has more than made up for lost time. He was able to find the family [that] he never thought he would see again, and [to] bring some of them to his new home in New York. While working 60 hours a week, he earned an associate's degree at Onondaga Community College, and is pursuing a degree at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. He also helped found two non-profit organizations to help Sudanese in the United States and abroad, by raising money for health and education projects.

His story is featured in Christopher Quinn's celebrated documentary, "God Grew Tired of Us," and in his own memoir, released earlier this year by National Geographic Press. Dau has become an activist and icon in the fight to end genocide in Africa and human-rights crimes in general, and local students and community members will have a chance to hear him speak [on] Saturday as part of the fourth annual Change Your World Celebration.

"People are incredibly moved by personal narratives, and our work at the Idaho Human Rights Education Center is to move people to speak out and take action against injustice. When somebody can convey a personal story, that's far more compelling than research or discourse or academic models," said Amy Herzfeld, executive director of the IHREC.

Her organization worked with Boise State in September 2006 to celebrate Human Rights Month with a keynote speech by Holocaust survivor Gerda Weissmann Klein and a related art exhibit at the Student Union Gallery featuring photos Anne Frank's father took of his daughters.

This year, they wanted to keep that two-part structure, but broaden the theme, and though Dau's experience was specific, it speaks to an issue permeating the world.

"We wanted someone who had experienced profound injustice, who was caught up in a people's-rights movement that other people could relate to. One of our board members saw ("God Grew Tired of Us") and said, ‘This might be your person,'" Herzfeld said.

"The other reason [that] I thought [that] this would be important is that Boise does have an especially large refugee population for a city of its size. I believe [that] there are three refugee-resettlement agencies here, and we are including members of local Sudanese communities in the celebration."

The celebration includes a viewing of "God Grew Tired of Us" [on] Friday, before Dau's keynote speech on Saturday.

Holly Gilchrist, fine-arts program coordinator for Boise State, hopes [that] the film will inspire more people to hear Dau speak about the devastation in his homeland.

She was happy with the IHREC's choice of him as speaker, and she is still trying to find a way to express the art exhibit that shares his message.

"I don't even know what words to use to describe it. It is just phenomenal. If you're into politics or human rights, or art or design, you need to see this exhibition," Gilchrist said.

She and her assistant installed the collection of 75 posters last week, each one expressing something about human rights with stirring words and images. The posters are on loan from the Center for the Study of Political Graphics in California, and they range in era from the 1940s to the current day.

"There's just a wonderful display. African American issues, Native American issues, immigration issues, gay- and lesbian- and transgender-rights issues, women's-rights issues — it's just all across the board. Every poster is just so moving,"

Gilchrist said, adding that she had to rope off the gallery space while she was hanging the show [in order] to keep curious students from interrupting her work.

"We've already gotten a lot of comments, and it's only been up for a few days," she said.

"We wanted a multi-issue human-rights exhibit that would speak to human-rights issues all over the world — race, class, gender," Herzfeld said, "something that would broaden people's ideas of human rights ... Our mission is really education."

As is John Bul Dau's. His story may be beyond the imagining of most people living in the relative comfort and safety of the Treasure Valley, but the sooner [that] we realize how close to home it really is, the sooner [that] we'll be able to help him change the world.

"People are ready to connect the dots about how their lives are impacted by global politics and human-rights violations far away," Herzfeld said. "I think [that] people are hungry to make those connections."